


Talking in Your Sleep

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Author's Recommendations [25]
Category: Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Injury, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Stitches, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 09:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19611955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: They have a system: Frank gets hurt, Lieberman takes care of him.





	Talking in Your Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for the cool folks. Inbox, who gave me comics brainworms. Juice, who lets me babble my way through ideas so I can sort them into stories. Eli, who has supported and fed my Liebercastle fixation for a solid year now. Everyone else who ever took the time to read and leave kudos.
> 
> You're all the actual fans, and I treasure you.

They have a system.

Code, but not obvious code. If Frank takes off to do what he does, Lieberman keeps his phone on him and hopes it doesn’t go off. If things go well, Frank will turn back up when he turns back up. Couple days laying low, and if he needs more than a week, he at least drops a line, clear and brief; alls well.

It’s a good system because for the most part, things _do_ go well. Frank can either drag himself to the Night Nurse, limp to a bolthole and sleep off the worst of it, or he can get back to Lieberman before there’s any chance of him getting concerned, no severe injuries to deal with.

And then some nights, he has no choice but to text. 

Still a good system, he supposes. They have a basic code worked out. Anyone reading their back logs would assume they’re kids who party together on occasion, probably selling each other drugs.

Whatever works.

The code is really a thing of beauty, given how much information can be worked into a short text. Names denote the neighbourhood. Different motels or flops signified with allusions or puns on the name. Whether Frank needs Lieberman to secure a room or not depends on if he uses a question, and numbers between one and five signify the severity of his condition. If he needs supplies, he asks for Lieberman to bring something; ‘party favors’ for medical supplies, ‘snacks’ for clothes, ‘something special’ for weapons.

Laying in an alley with enough discarded crap tossed over himself to hide the blood, trying not to lean his back against the wall despite his exhaustion, Frank manages a quick text. It’s almost three in the morning, but Lieberman will answer. He always has.

> [Spent all day inside w/ Brook. Bring party favors for 4 tonite?]

Major injuries. Bring a medical kit. Brooklyn, Day’s Inn. Lieberman will have to get the room. Simple code that reads like vapid nonsense. Lieberman came up with it; Lieberman comes up with the lion’s share of sustainable good ideas. 

The reply comes only a minute later:

> [;)]

The text faces were the hardest part for Frank. He’s pretty sure the semicolon ‘wink’ face is supposed to be the 15-20 minute marker, but it might be the at-least-an-hour mark. It doesn’t matter, really. It’s a wait. More time for Frank to wait, half hidden in the trash in an alley. Twenty minutes later, drifting in and out of a hazy grey place in his head, his phone vibrates again, telling him Lieberman is waiting on keys. 

Where he’s at, Frank can only see the back of the building, the office entirely out of his view. He gathers himself, knowing he can’t see to keep any kind of track on the rental office, and makes himself stand up, pushing the camouflaging trash off himself and trying to keep silent as the shrapnel in his back seems to dig in deeper. 

He doesn’t know how long after that it takes. The after-fight adrenaline is largely burnt up, and he’s wasted too much time stubbornly trying to patch up the injuries he could manage himself. At this point, he’s beyond even the usual post-fight snapping anger. He’s tired, injured, and at three in the goddamn morning he’s dragging Lieberman out of whatever sleep he’d been getting to help him -- and Lieberman, as always, is stepping up.

So Frank doesn’t worry about how long it takes. Some stretch of minutes, it doesn’t matter. The blood gluing his shirt to his skin is cold and the fabric is stiff where it’s started to dry to the open wounds, catching on the bits of metal sticking out of his flesh. When the door in the back of the building opens, he waits just long enough to force his eyes to focus, assure himself that the dark shape in the parking lot light, holding the door, is indeed Lieberman, and then he pulls himself together and makes his way over.

Lieberman curses when he gets a look at him, helps him to the room. There’s a vague sort of relief that it’s on the first floor, and Frank barely takes anything in, no appreciation for what passes for decor, making a beeline for the bed so he can sit. He knows he stinks, he knows even after changing out of the Punisher get up he looks like someone who just crawled their way out of several miles of rough field. Lieberman doesn’t complain; Lieberman stands back for a moment, assessing, and then starts digging through the massive military-grade medical backpack he’s put together, getting out a suture kit, gauze, baggies to put the shrapnel in so they can dispose of it somewhere further from the actual scene. Pills, some kind of medical wipes, bottles of something he’ll inject Frank with -- antibiotics, Frank thinks, but he isn’t completely certain. A number of other things.

They haven’t said a proper word to each other yet. It’s like this sometimes; too busy with the situation at hand for pleasantries. Frank hisses through his teeth and he bends to drag his boots off, stands just long enough to shuck his pants, and then sits there trying to keep himself breathing steady while Lieberman settles on the bed behind him, figuring out where to start.

It’s easy to forget, as neatly as Lieberman steps up to the plate, that he’s not really trained in any of this. He’s brave in a very fundamental way, willing to lay hands on a man like Frank, do things he knows will make Frank hurt more in the name of helping him heal. In that way, it’s good that Frank wasted so much time trying to save face and deal with this himself; he’s too tired to growl or threaten while Lieberman goes about getting the metal out of his back and cleaning him up.

At no point does Lieberman suggest he should have found a real doctor, gone to the hospital, gotten one of his costly back alley, no-license medics to do the job. In some way, some strange, unspoken way, Frank thinks there’s a measure of pride in this for Lieberman. Despite the anger he exudes over Frank’s condition, and over the hour, the cost of these supplies, the sleep he’s missing -- despite all the bluster, Lieberman does good work because he’s proud to be the one Frank lets do this.

They don’t talk about that, either.

Could be Frank’s mistaken about it. He’s too tired to worry too much about it, honestly. And it doesn’t matter too much, in the grand scheme of things; whatever his reasons, Lieberman _does_ show up, he _does_ do a damn good job, and even if he gets and attitude about timing or recklessness, he never tells Frank not to come to him for help in the future. He never demands an out.

“Hey,” Lieberman says suddenly, pinching his ear. Only as he’s jerking upright does Frank notice he was starting to fold neatly in half over his own legs, slipping back into that warm grey haze. “Sit up. Keep still. I’m almost done.”

It’s the closest thing to a comfort Lieberman ever offers, ‘almost done’. He never lies about it, either; ‘almost done’ from Lieberman means another ten minutes, max. Frank mentally grapples, trying to force himself to wakefulness.

“Notice there’s only one bed,” Frank says, forcibly keeping still as the needle is pushed again through his skin, listening to the sound of the forceps closing to pull the hook and thread through. Breathe easy, steady, distract from the sensation.

“Of course there’s only one fucking bed, they thought I was here alone,” Lieberman says, scathing. “You wanted me to, what, tell them I’m expecting a friend? Give them an extra reason to remember me when I’m carrying that fucking medical case?”

He puts on a good act, the bitchy, exasperated thing. Frank is fairly certain, by this point, it really _is_ just an act. No one as angry as Lieberman is trying to sound could keep their hands so steady, so gentle. 

Frank exhales, keeps the rest of himself still as he bows his head. “I can sleep in the chair.”

“Oh grow up,” Lieberman snaps, pushing the needle in once again, careful, precise. “We’re gonna share the fucking bed.”

Maybe it's the blood loss, maybe it's the sheer exhaustion that's squatting on Frank's chest and burrowing into his bones, but he can't bring himself to snap back at Lieberman's snarling. If it’s meant as bait, it’s not good enough. Not this time, at least. 

So there's one bed; they've done a good deal more together than sleep.

Come to that, Frank can't think of a time they've wound up in an actual bed together. The floor, most times, is the quickest, nearest option; one memorable time against the wall. That horrible fucking couch in the Newark flop.

None of that was sleeping, though. None of that was vulnerable, guard down, unconscious. It was fast, needy, grasping sex, and Frank doesn't think he could get his dick up if Lieberman asked, not tonight. He's tired to his bones, fatigue circulating with his sluggish pulse. 

A shame. They don't have an excuse to wind up in a room with a bed together very often. Cots and that godawful flat camping thing didn't count, probably too small to hold them both anyway. 

This is a _bed_. A real, soft, sinfully comfortable pillow-top bed, plenty of room for them both. The idea of allowing himself to fall asleep with Lieberman beside him is alluring and terrible. He doesn't know that he'll be able to actually sleep with someone else so close, except... he wants to. He's too tired to fight that that's exactly what he wants, just a night to be like this, just a guy who needs to sleep with the one person in the whole damn world he can trust laid out beside him.

Lieberman keeps up the bitter attitude during the whole process of getting Frank as cleaned up as they're likely to manage without him trying to hold himself up in the shower. Antiseptic wipes, bandages, then three pills handed to Frank from over his shoulder. 

When at last Lieberman pulls away, rocking to his feet to start cleaning up the mess from all the bandages and various packets he'd had to open, he does so with a sigh. Lieberman is good with clean up. Frank makes messes -- of his body, of other people, of life -- and Lieberman finds a way to clean them up.

Yeah, Frank's too tired for this shit. The kind of exhaustion that tries to make a man sappy. 

"I think I should try and get some food in you," Lieberman says, sounding a little doubtful. It's somewhere between four and five in the morning, and the sun is going to start crawling into the sky any time now. "You think if I went across the street to that burger place, you could eat a burger?"

The snark is gone. Dissolved like dew in the morning sun; if Lieberman was ever actually mad, he's done with it now. Honestly, he sounds almost as tired as Frank feels. 

Frank shakes his head and watches Lieberman process that. He's got Frank's ruined shirt in his hands, both hands wrapped in the fabric. It's trash, really, it was full of holes before Frank dragged it over his bloody body and now it’s crusted with blood to boot. Lieberman will throw it away, give him one of those neat, ironed shirts he grabs four-for-a-buck at thrift stores. It's just a shirt; he goes through them all the time.

But there's something, something he doesn't quite have words for, about the sight of Lieberman standing there next to the bed, twisting the ruins of his shirt in his hands and asking if he can feed Frank, help him yet further.

"Think I just need to sleep," Frank says, laying down carefully. When he looks down the length of his legs, he's not entirely surprised to see the ankle that had been giving him such pain to walk on is swollen and mottled in ugly reddish purple, "You ready to?"

He watches Lieberman hesitate. Thinks about making some play-mean comment about who was being a kid about it now. He thinks about telling Lieberman the chair is still an option for someone, but he's not moving. Thinks about settling against the pillows and telling Lieberman to come to bed.

Come to bed, like they're two normal people staying up late for some mundane reason, staying in a trashy tourist hotel in Brooklyn. 

Lieberman chews his lip when he's worried about things. Frank hates that he knows that, hates that he watches this man enough to have picked that up and hates that he cares enough to remember. "I feel like I should make you drink some water at least. There was a lot of blood coming out of those holes in your back."

That's the thing with Lieberman; he cares. He takes care of Frank. 

Really, Frank doesn't deserve that. Probably they both know it. 

"I just wanna sleep," Frank reiterates, and lets himself lay back on the pillows, watching from half-lidded eyes as Lieberman nods and goes to turn off the overhead light

Frank sleeps best on his side, facing the door of whatever room he's in. 

Lieberman always seems to favour his back or his stomach, sprawling out with his head resting on his arms. Another detail Frank shouldn't know and yet can't seem to help having picked up. 

Without needing to be told, Frank shifts further toward the wall, making space for Lieberman to lay on the door-side of the room. If the door busts open, Frank can roll off the bed and get his hands on the gun stashed with the medical supplies on the far side of the bed, easy as breathing. He doesn't like that it makes Lieberman the easier target, but he can hear Lieberman telling him to fuck off if he tried to argue _that_ point, so why bother?

In the low light left by the bedside lamp, Lieberman strips down to his boxers, and Frank pretends not to watch. This is a game they both play often; one removes clothes and the other very clearly doesn't pay attention. They don't talk about it, but Frank's not stupid enough to think someone as observant as Lieberman could miss the way Frank angles his head every time, just right to watch him from the corner of his eyes. Certainly Frank has caught Lieberman's wandering gaze a few times when he has to strip off in a shared space.

Neither of them mind, Frank assumes, just like neither of them can discuss it. How do you talk about a thing like that? Lieberman could say he was watching Frank for any number of reasons, perfectly legitimate, Frank's sure, but Frank has no ready excuses. He clearly doesn't see Lieberman as a threat, he doesn't need to keep an eye on him for any sign of injury. He watches Lieberman because he likes the sight of him, soft and bare and vulnerable as only a trusting, near-naked man can be.

It's the trust, really, that makes the sight of him so irresistible. No matter how angry he gets, Lieberman is so trusting of Frank, so ready to believe in the best of him. He lets himself be utterly vulnerable, bares his stomach and his throat to Frank in defiance of all logic, and Frank can't help appreciating that gift. Trust is a gift, whatever else it may be offered as; it's always a gift.

Lieberman walks past the bed to play with the temperature controls on the window unit. They're both used to sleeping in cooler spaces -- Frank because most of the safe houses he uses have no heating to speak of, Lieberman because he keeps the spaces he settles into cold so he can run his computer shit without anything overheating. 

And extra heat makes Frank more prickly in temperament, something Lieberman has noted many times, both mockingly and simply to point out. 

When the air conditioning kicks on with a grumble and a whir of processed air, Lieberman climbs into his side of the bed, stretches out on his back, and sighs. He sounds, with that sigh, like he's about to say something, but Frank can't imagine what that could be. Frank waits, facing him because Lieberman is between him and the door, and he always lays facing the door.

Then Lieberman rolls onto his side, turns the bedside lamp off, and turns over fully onto his stomach. Frank reaches for the blanket shoved to the foot of the bed, carefully maneuvering to put the least amount of strain on his stitched up back as possible while carefully not touching Lieberman's side, and draws the blanket over them both as the room starts getting cold enough to feel comfortable sleeping in.

As tired as Frank is, he expects sharing the bed to keep him awake. They've done so many things, so many intimate, physical things, but this is intimate in a much more intense sort of way, passive as it is; this is both of them giving themselves permission to be completely vulnerable, while being extremely close to one another. At least in sex you're conscious; you can respond to a threat, sluggish as you might be and little as you might want to.

Sleeping, you have to hope to wake in time if a threat makes itself known. 

Frank lays there, watching the soft hill of Lieberman's bulk rise and fall in time with his breathing, listening to that breathing even out and deepen, and the room is still dark when he closes his eyes and falls asleep himself.

He wakes up warm and comfortable in a way he hasn't been in a long, long time. He doesn't wake slowly very often; he tends to flip neatly between awake and asleep because that groggy midway place is too dangerous to linger in. 

Now, he forces himself to savour this, at least pretend to do something other than snap straight awake, because he's not completely sure Lieberman is still asleep either, and if Lieberman _is_ awake, and notices him waking as well, he'll move.

Sometime in the night, Lieberman had rolled onto his side, facing Frank. And sometime after that, he'd put his arm over Frank and bundled him close, and Frank honestly doesn't know how he slept through that, slept through Lieberman dragging him into a hug.

A cuddle.

That's what this is, any way he wants to look at this. They're cuddling, Frank's face pressed into the soft, hairy skin of Lieberman's shoulder, breathing against his collarbone. Lieberman's hand against Frank's back is warm and pleasant, and Frank's not entirely innocent either. He's holding Lieberman in turn, arm tangled under Lieberman's own, fingers digging into the ample flesh of his back.

It's nice. All of it, all of it is so, so much nicer than it should be, and Frank can see no reason why he should rush to escape that good. The world doesn't need any help making him suffer, and Frank is all too aware that once he gets himself moving, he's going to be in a whole lot of pain, the wounds dug into his back extra tender now that the adrenaline is played out and the painkillers are slept through. 

There is no good excuse for allowing himself to indulge in this for even this long. They have a limited time in this room and they -- Frank, especially -- have shit to do. Blood loss and the haze of drugs are no longer an excuse; there _is_ no excuse for this, and Frank knows he should move, pull away. He can even do it gently, if Lieberman is really still asleep, slip out of his arms and wake him up after he’s on his own feet, distance restored.

That’s what he should do. 

Reasonable. Responsible. 

Lieberman’s arms tighten around him, holding him, keeping him close the way Lieberman never does in waking. That’s the thing, as bitchy as Lieberman gets about Frank’s recklessness, about Frank’s insistence on distance, about how quickly Frank rushes him through every kind of recovery… Lieberman is never greedy enough to hold on. He never tries to keep Frank, not still, not close, not out of danger; he always lets Frank go, trusting him to come back on his own terms.

“Frank,” Lieberman grumbles, voice slurred with sleep, his name hardly intelligible. The sound of it makes something in Frank twist up, pleased and ashamed of that simple pleasure, “Go t' sleep.”

He shouldn’t. They need to get up and get out of here, move on, move out. The sun is up and so should they be. Life goes on and the war is unending; there is no time for this kind of pointless, gentle indulgence. 

Closing his eyes, he rests his forehead into the softness of Lieberman’s chest and allows himself, just for a little while, to rest.


End file.
